Floating offshore wind gathers momentum

Beyond the completion of the floater construction and the September fitting of the transition piece and the wind turbine at quayside, there were two decisive and delicate operations scheduled this summer: the pre-lay of the mooring lines as well as the float-off, or separation, of the concrete structure from the floating barges on which it was built.

With cost competitiveness being a key driver in this emblematic project, we set out to design an innovative mooring system

using nylon ropes several years ago. This being a first-of-a-kind we also had to develop and optimize specific offshore installation methods to ensure smooth, safe and rapid offshore operations.

Having a fully integrated team of engineers covering all phases of the project, from conception to completion, helped us to integrate such offshore installation constraints and specificities very early on in the design and engineering phase, limiting many unforeseen and often

Ideol has been in the news these last few weeks because Floatgen, France’s first offshore wind turbine, has successfully reached two key milestones Bruno G. Geschier, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, at Ideol, came in to PES to talk us through this ground breaking project.

Bruno G. Geschier, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer

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costly surprises down the line.

It also helped us collaborate efficiently with suppliers and offshore works specialists as our own team’s offshore background enabled us to go straight to the point on many issues.

Overall the operations went as planned, helping us gain valuable information and experience in the process. We’re already hard at work to further optimise the installation process, as well as make further improvements to our mooring system, as every hour of offshore work saved, translates into immediate substantial savings, particularly in tomorrow’s commercial-scale wind farm context.

The fact we started with a particularly shallow, 32m depth and rough oceanic environment enabled us to also demonstrate that both our design and our innovative mooring system could be

certified and insured in the most challenging environments from the get up and go.

The removal off the barges from the newly built concrete structures was also a very interesting operation. First and foremost because we took full advantage of the unique compact dimensions of our patented floating structure – particularly when sized to accommodate tomorrow’s XXL wind turbines. Our floater is the only one that can be built using different methods and adapts to different construction site constraints.

In Floatgen’s case, we could have built our floater on a quay or in a dry dock but deliberately choose a floating barge to reduce construction and launching costs and facilitate the launching operations using an existing lock in Saint-Nazaire’s harbour.

We’ve always insisted on developing a technology that would offer such flexibility and would be capable of making the most of local infrastructure and our very first project proved us right. In Japan, our first floater is currently being built in a dry-dock, using steel as hull material; another demonstration of the unique flexibility and adaptability of our patented technology.

Here also, we took full advantage of our unique in-house expertise and were able to integrate that operation early on in the design stage. Our supplying partners and contractors were of course of valuable help making this also first-of-kind-operation a success.

The next steps

The now independently floating concrete structure will be towed back to its original spot, where we will fit and pre-commission the wind turbine. A giant inauguration party

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Floatgen’s floating foundation ready for the float-off on August 22nd. ©Ideol/Bouygues Travaux Publics

The float-off was successfully completed on August 23rd. ©Ideol/Bouygues Travaux Publics

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is scheduled in October, before the entire system is towed to its dedicated offshore site and hooked-up to the pre-installed mooring lines and electrical cable. We will start producing power and gather valuable operational data during Q4 2017.

We are obviously pleased that our vision is becoming a reality. Even if there are no doubts about the relevance and performance of our technology as it has been the subject of so many in-depth technical due-diligence and audits by prestigious universities, leading utility companies, offshore developers, wind turbine manufacturers, investors, financial institutions, etc.

Seeing our floater ‘float’ and produce energy opens an exciting new chapter in the story of our young company and helps in giving a positive image to this growing industry.

Our other source of satisfaction is that we will be the only floating technology with at least two full-scale demonstrators in the water by next year. These two very different projects, on different continents, using different hull materials, different mooring systems and designed according to different class certification requirements, will generate a tremendous amount of return on experience and data.

These will be able to be analysed, digested and implemented, in all our other existing and future projects whilst providing the project financing community with the assurance our technology performs as planned, wherever in the world.

Growing in momentum

Floatgen is only one of a handful of floating wind demonstrators in the world. The

acceleration is actually occurring now and several facts point to this.

Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWT), the world’s largest and most prestigious event, solely dedicated to floating offshore wind, started a few years back as a Franco-French technical seminar, gathering together several dozen people.

Last year there were close to 400 participants, this year over 600. FOWT 2018, which will take place in Marseille on April 25th and 26th 2018, will gather between 800 and 1000 of the world’s leading experts and companies on the subject.

This is a clear indication of positive momentum and strong international interest given the attendance of several large foreign delegations.

WindEurope issued its landmark Floating Offshore Wind vision statement last June and set-up a Floating Wind task Force, which I have the privilege and honour to chair.

WindEurope and its members – all key industrial stakeholders – have clearly expressed that floating wind is coming of age and is no longer confined to R&D.

Floating wind costs will fall, perhaps at a greater speed than what we’ve seen with bottom-fixed wind.

Floating and bottom-fixed are not competing but rather complementary and feeding from each other’s’ efforts to reduce costs. Floating wind means more wind, in other words, the entire supply chain sees commercial-scale floating wind, as one of the very few ways to achieve, the EC’s 2030 targets in terms of renewable electricity generation.

Lastly, Europe has developed a strong leadership in offshore wind and aims at maintaining that leadership through fast deployment of floating offshore wind and exploiting its enormous global potential.

Some countries such as France have launched pre-commercial tenders for 100MW to be commissioned by 2020-201 and are gearing up for the world’s first commercial-scale tenders by early 2018. This is for perhaps as much as 1 to 2GW.

Other countries are actively investigating the same opportunities and adapting their regulatory framework to meet floating wind’s specificities. Where and when shall we see the first commercial-scale array (400MW+) is tough to say but France is clearly gearing up to lead this global movement.

No doubt we’ll start seeing commercial-scale deployments connected by the mid-2020s and the offshore wind landscape will drastically evolve by then. One can easily imagine floating commercial arrays of 600MW to 1GW, fitted with 12 to 15MW wind turbines, designed to last 30 years or more and installed where the best wind speeds and capacity factors can be observed.

Combining these new parameters will undoubtedly generate numbers that will attract investors. These same new parameters will also dramatically impact floating technologies, with only a few of them being able to accommodate this imminent wind turbine size scale-up, increased local content expectations and extended lifespan.

www.ideol-offshore.com

A vessel chartered by Bourbon performed the offshore installation of Floatgen’s mooring lines, off the coast of Le Croisic, in western France. ©Ideol/Centrale Nantes

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